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Wheel spacer question. As a bike mechanic I understand why performance of the bearings should be way more reliable with proper spacers. But they seem to make my wheels sound insane. Way more noise as they spin. What's the deal
When you tighten them are they snug? It's the whole point of spacers and speed rings.
I go back and forth on spacer usage...
I was a bike mechanic too and used spacers until recently.
I don’t use them anymore. Skateboard wheels don’t have great tolerances and urethane is somewhat flexible. What I found is spacers can make my bearings jam and fuck them up more. Spacers make the bearing unit rigid whereas force on the wheel is not equal. If you land semi primo, as I do sometimes popping out of a crooked grind, you have pressure on the outside of the wheel, which makes the wheel twist towards the truck kingpin. Spacers keep the bearing unit rigid during the twist, which creates a ton of force on the bearings and jams them as the races twist.
If you don’t have the spacers then the bearing can move with the urethane and often rebound back into place. A bike is almost always a rigid unit with little rotational force like this. A good example are cup and cone bearings or even sealed axle bearings. On a bike you mostly have vertical force and occasionally lateral force, but even in sharp turns no rotational force.
Lastly lots of wheels have inconsistent spec which only exacerbates the issue. I’ve tossed my spacers and not had a single issue so far whereas I have ruined a few bearings over the past few years with them. I literally cracked a race of a Swiss and a Quantum.
Topic: Wheels Thread (Read 797536 times)